Harsanyi Moves to Editorial

I don’t know whether David Harsanyi is happy about the move or not, but I hope it works to his advantage. The Denver Postannounced today that Harsanyi, who has been writing columns for the paper’s news section, will join the editorial team. The article announces:

… David Harsanyi… will move to the Post’s op-ed pages. …

Harsanyi, who joined The Post’s staff in May 2004, in part to provide some ideological balance to [former columnist Diane] Carman and then-columnist Jim Spencer, has done his job well, Moore said. Often offering a libertarian “live and let live” take on the policies and practices emanating from city hall and the statehouse, he also has roamed the city for interesting tales of regular folks rubbing up against unforgiving bureaucracies or just plain silliness, Moore said.

His new book, “Nanny State,” is a critique of efforts by local, state and federal governments to regulate numerous aspects of our lives.

I am a bit worried about the phrase, “op-ed pages.” Does that mean that Harsanyi will have no input in the paper’s editorials? Whether or not he helps decide and write the content of editorials, will he write frequent articles under his own name? If the purpose of the move is to balance out the Post’s often-shrill left-wing politics, then that’s great. But I hope the point is not to limit Harsanyi’s voice on the paper.

Meanwhile, William Porter will write a column for the news side. He promises, “I plan to write slice-of-life columns about Denver and the state. No screeds. No term papers. Stories.” In other words, he plans to write non-ideological soap-opera-style stories. That’s great — that means that I can safely ignore yet another section of the paper. But we’ll see if his columns in fact become ideological pitches that pretend not to be.